Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Firstly, I want to apologise for not posting sooner, but my research has been continuing, whilst I have been teaching on FE and HE courses at Somerset College. Since my last post, I have spent a considerable amount of time interviewing ladies from Somerset WI on their experiences of using cookbooks and speaking to illustrators who worked on cookbooks.

Most recently, I traveled to Surrey to interview Juliet Renny, who illustrated Elizabeth David's 1960 cookbook - French Provincial Cooking.

Juliet was in her early twenties, and a student at Guildford School of Art and Design. She kindly showed me a wide variety of drawings made for the book, and explained her methods of creating these iconic illustrations.

Here are a selection of drawings made for the book, which were painstakingly rendered in Elizabeth David's home at Halsey Street in London.

Renny continued to illustrate cookbooks, and one particular example is for Rosemary Hume's The Cordon Bleu cookbook in 1963 and later First Steps in the Kitchen: Recipes for Young Beginners by Maureen O Connor in 1972. She also illustrated cookbooks for Zena Skinner.

About

I am currently undertaking PhD research at Falmouth University. My research project is concerned with the interplay between cookery book writer and illustrator and the books they collaborated on. The years I am focusing on – 1954 (the year controlled food rationing ended) to 1965, provided some of the most influential and inspiring cookery books. This period also marked the rise in cookery programmes and ever increasing independence for women. This blog will enable my research to reach a wider audience, and incite response from fellow illustrators, writers, academics and interested parties.